THE VINEYARD ROAD
 

The wineyard route works within the scope of the Peninsula Tour Routes Project covers the Menderes, Seferihisar, Güzelbahçe, Urla, Karaburun, Çeşme and Selçuk regions of İzmir, in which viticulture is practiced.
Poet Homer is known to have made the first reference to winemaking in Ionia (8^th century B.C.). In Iliad, the poet mentions a wine called “Pramnios” (or Pramnos), while reciting in his second epic Odyssey Circe, the magician, who made Odysseus and his crew drunk with Pramnios to capture them. Pramnios is also praised by authors of the following centuries such as Aristophanes, Athenaeus and old Plinius. Starting from the 7^th Century B.C., wine, in its unique amphora, was in great demand across a wide geography from the West Mediterranean shores to the shores of the Black Sea. Due to the convenience of the Aegean soil to viticulture thanks to the regions micro climate, the breeze of the four winds and the heat of the Aegean, sun the wine was produced from the grapes in the Ionian city Klazomenai (Urla). In his work titled “De materia medica”, physician Dioscorides refers to the Klazomenai and Kos (İstanköy) wines as follows: “They contain a lot of sea water, thus are easy to digest and they help breathing. However, they are destructive to the stomach and harmful to the nerves”. Old Plinius backs this argument and adds: “Klazomenai is more popular today since it contains less sea water”. The first written sources dealing with the wine of Klazomenai date back to the Roman times (1^st and 2^nd century B.C.).
The winery which was excavated in Çeşme Bağlararası in 2009 reveals the fact that viticulture and wine making has been practiced in the Peninsula for thousands of years. The winery located at the ancient port of Çeşme, where the Cretan and the Hittites exported the wine they produced in the 2000s B.C., is being unearthed by excavations.
Our vineyard route, which traces this legacy, intersects with the walking and bicycle paths and brings the enthusiasts together with the producers at the vineyards in Çeşme and Urla. There are ongoing works to connect the vineyard routes to networks such as the European Wine Cities.
For the year 2014, the total areas and annual productions of the table and wine grapes in the regions where the Vineyard Route passes through are as follows:

Güzelbahçe       : 1502 decares 1500 tons
Çeşme                 : 2050 decares 1645 tons
Karaburun          : 160 decares 149 tons
Menderes          : 15610 decares 15230 tons
Seferihisar          : 4664 decares 6400 tons
Selçuk                  : 3970 decares 3972 tons
Urla                       : 1450 decares 3075 tons
Karabağlar          : 2990 decares 2564 tons